Writing for Sanity's Sake

Last night I laid there and wondered if the pieces of the puzzle which are coming together are getting closer and closer to being complete and do people realize it?

What IS the point of unsustainability or the point of no return…or maybe there is no return but just a relentless march forward., like a snowball rolling downhill.

The world is a wonderful place and there are so many wonderful people in it. I love many, many of them…of you!

It was such a beautiful day yesterday. It’s hard to believe that some of the things that are going on are even happening. It seems surreal and distant, as if it’s being broadcast to Earth from another planet.

But, apparently being a passenger on spaceship Earth is a dangerous thing.

Some will say have faith, that your faith will sustain you. Some will say there is no faith to have, only living life.

I want to say there is something else, something greater that is here, but just out of reach and that we will all touch it before all of the puzzle is completed.

But we have a ways to go as a species, as compassionate creatures, and as spiritual beings.

Saw a squirrel out back tonight fooling around with my bird feeder and I began to think back:

The year was 1960 and I was nearing my tenth birthday.

I was watching my Grandpa as he chopped down an old rotten Elm tree which was near the edge of his drive. The first frost had already fallen and it was a late September day, if my memory serves me right. I was standing up on the front porch and watched as the big old tree fell from a precisely placed last strike of the ax from Grandpa. There were no chain saws around back then, just the two person cross cut saw which my Dad had helped Grandpa with, and his sharp ax. That tree was going to become fodder for the old iron wood burning stove with the two eyes on top. That huge old glutton of wooden food could take five or six big logs and then turn orange red on the outside as it burned blazing hot in my Grandparent’s living room. You dare not touch it when it was freshly stoked or you would suffer a nasty burn. All of us grandchildren learned from an early age “not to touch the stove”

The tree came down and I noticed my Dad peering curiously into one of the sections of the tree and then reaching in and picking something up. He looked up at the porch and hollered for me to come down there. I came running and was amazed to see Dad holding a little squirming furry bundle. It was a baby squirrel. He gave it to me and told me to hold onto the squirmy little rodent. It appeared to be about half grown, and was ambulatory and quite unhappy to have literally “fallen” into its current situation. Grandma happened to have a tall cardboard box at the house, so I ran up and put the little fur ball into it. It was too tiny to jump out the top, and so there it stayed in its first home away from its family. We were at my Grandparent’s house for a few more days and I played with that squirrel for hours every day. Much to my Grandpa and Dad’s surprise, the squirrel started to “tame up” and actually began to eat a variety of foods, including left over cornbread. Its little tummy would poke out after every meal.

On the way home in the car, I let the little rascal climb around inside my shirt. He didn’t offer to bite me, but those sharp little claws did more than just tickle on a couple of occasions.

Once we got him home, Dad acquired a metal cage from somebody. It was like a small chicken coop and the only way to keep the squirrel in securely was with a stretch spring which Daddy had gotten from the mill. That spring had to be pulled tight and latched on one of the crossbars of the cage every time we got the little rascal in and out of the cage.

As he matured, our little pet gray squirrel became a true track star. He would run all over the house, up and down the furniture and jumping onto the light fixtures much to my Mom’s consternation. He was pretty tame with me, but he began to bite anyone else who tried to feed him. I got really attached to the little critter but it became apparent to me, even at ten years old, that he wasn’t really a happy camper. Wild animals like this just are not meant to be kept in a cage.

The end of his tenure at our house came abruptly. I was trying to hook the sharp ended spring into its place on the cage one day, and it slipped and raked across the meaty part of my hand causing a nasty cut. I hollered and bled for a while and Mom decided, against my protests that my furry friend had to go.

My Dad gave the squirrel and the cage to one of my cousins. A couple of months later Dad told me that the little feller had choked on a piece of orange (yep…it like fruit) and had died. I was heartbroken for a few days, but as children will do, I soon forgot my pet squirrel and started thinking about baseball cards, or comic books, or some other childish thing.

Since then,I have always liked squirrels, even though I know most folks consider them pesky little creatures who like to gobble up bird food, and generally cause problems by climbing around in attics and such as that.

I don’t begrudge them their little bit of seed though because I know those little dudes are voracious eaters, and it’s sometimes hard for them to find enough to satisfy their hunger.

I look out the window at them jumping around like acrobats and I can sometimes still feel a little tickle inside my shirt…. It was a short but worthwhile relationship between a nerdy kid and a furry rodent.

The New Year is creeping every closer. Just a few more days until Sunday and it will be 2017.

When I was a kid in the 1950’s, I often thought about the year 2000 and beyond. I thought it would be a magical time where most problems of health and poverty would be solved and I thought that surely by then the world would find a way to be at peace. I thought people would travel around in “sky cars” sort of like the Jetsons and that there would be devices to take care of human needs.

I thought human beings would be living together like the people in the Coke commercials. Singing together in “perfect harmony”. I think maybe if we, the human race, had spent as much money and effort on the problems of health and poverty, and on finding ways of helping our fellow man instead of on wars, weapons of wars and ways to destroy each other we might have seen that idealistic world I dreamed off as a child. Instead, the rich have become richer and the poor have gotten poorer, and our divisions have deepened.

Where did we go wrong? Surely I thought, after two huge wars that killed so many people in the middle of the century we would LEARN something……I want to go back sometimes to those days in the past and see if it was something I did, or didn’t do, that might have helped. Surely I could have done more. Certainly we could have all done more. Instead we have become slaves to technology, instead of beneficiaries of it.

People use it to spread hatred and discord. People spend hours and days lost in cyber space instead of talking face to face with each other. Instead of moving forward for the good of all mankind, and in the spirit of love, it appears we have gone backwards. In this past year especially, hatred has become more widespread. The population of our country seems always to be split right down the middle on important social and cultural issues. The holiday season this year has given us a tiny break in which to catch our breath, before we apparently embark on a new national journey….a tact we have never before taken. We are sailing in uncharted waters. Bad or good? Depends on which half of the population you belong to.

I have to have hope that we will learn from what lies ahead. I have to have faith that somehow humanity will turn over a new leaf, and that my children and grandchildren will have a world in which to live. Yes…the new year is creeping every closer this week. There is still a chance for all of those good things that I have pondered on in the past to happen. I wonder if there’s a chance they will? I wonder if we can solve the the number one problem in this world? The problem of people hating other people just because they are different from them. Just because they look different. Just because they think differently.

I used to fantasize as a child about aliens coming to visit Earth, and bringing us the secrets to peace and prosperity. Now I realize that in order for any culture or beings to reach out into the Universe to spread harmony and knowledge, they must first learn how to have it themselves. If they are anything like us, it doesn’t appear that’s a possibility! We earthlings can barely cooperate long enough to decide what’s for dinner…much less think about reaching out to the stars.

When the ball drops, and it becomes 2017, think about what you can do to make this a better world. Let’s try a little selflessness instead of selfishness. Is it too late, or not??

The Voice

There is that voice which is there all time in my head. He has been there ever since I can remember. He was the one who told me back in the fall of 1953 when I was almost 4 years old to ride my tricycle down the front steps on my house. A busted forehead and several stitches later the voice told me we would never, ever do that again.

He sings constantly to me, in any style. I can have a country song by Johnny Cash followed by Imagine Dragons singing “Demons” At times he scares me with my person demons, but at other times he soothes me with sweet poetry. He will be with me until my last breath.

I have read a lot about this… “Inner voice” our internal narrator, our personal monologue which I think….at least from conversations which I have had with others… I think we all have going on constantly in our head. I know all about my guy. I know what to expect from him most of the time. He comes up with some weird things, some good things, and some thoughts which are verbalized which I would never consciously say to another human being. He says some very rude and vulgar things. He also comes up with some tender and moving soliloquies. I hear him just as if he were another person speaking to me. It is never like an invisible or hidden voice, but always speaking directly to me just as another person would. I don’t know how other people hear their inner selves, I really do not know if everyone even has an internal voice.

I’ve heard some people say that our internal voice comes from the way our parents and those around us speak to us as babies and early toddlers. I’m not so sure I accept that theory. I just cannot hear my parents or any other relatives I knew as a baby or child in my monologue. I also can’t accept that people like John Wayne Gacy , or Jeffrey Dahmer had normal inner voices which came from their early associations. I would have really, truly have hated to be inside their head, listening to what was being said. I think their voice must have been riddled with hallucinations, or nightmares.

On the opposite end of the spectrum I would have loved to have heard some of what Leonardo da Vinci, or Albert Einstein had to say to themselves…maybe. I can imagine their inner voices having a sort of discourse, bouncing ideas off of their own walls in order to make discoveries of new things. I would probably been very confused. One cannot imagine what might be going on in the mind of the genius.

Jiminy Cricket would have called our inner voice our “consequence” In Zen, they would think of it as “Nen nen ju shin ki” which means something like “Thought following thought.”

I personally think of it as my heart. The center of my being.

I have read all the mundane explanations, about how the “soul” is nothing but a bunch of character individualization’s based on time, location and socioeconomic factors combined with each person unique experiences, which comprise our personality. I just don’t agree. There is enough of the mystic within me to continue to believe in things which cannot be seen or heard.

Whenever my inner voice speaks to me of any deep emotions it always comes from the heart. I have never had a headache from something bad happening, but always have the feeling come welling up from the center of my chest. My tears start in my heart.

When my voice tells me to be happy, I have never had my head spin. My joy starts in my heart, and radiates out into the rest of my body.

My inner voice comes from my heart and tells me the things no one else would or could tell me. I’d sure hate to lose him because he’s my oldest and closest companion.

I sometimes see the question “If you had the chance to live your life over again, would you do it?”

Of course none of us ever will….

And when I see this question, people usually qualify the answer: “Well, if I knew what I know now…” or “If I could make just a couple of changes…”

I tell you straight to the point, that I would. I’d do it again just exactly the same without changes anything one iota. I’d take the pain and heartache of burying a child, just to see her again through the nursery window.

I’d go through the agony of my parents death, just to hear their voices again. I’d let Mom hit me on the head with my bow again. I’d endure watching Porter Wagoner.

I’d wait til I was 16 again to see the Ocean for the first time. I’d rinse poop out of cloth diapers to have the chance for my baby girl to take a nap on my tummy.

I’d buy hot wheels for my boys to crush with rocks and bury under the Elm tree I planted on 9th street. I’d pick cherrys straight off the tree in the blazing Idaho summer sun for my Mother in law to can.

I’d chase lighting bugs all evening until I had a jar full, and take my turn at cranking the old ice cream machine.

I’d smell Grandpa’s pipe tobacco, and the wood smoke from the pot bellied stove. I’d listen to him cuss when I’d turn over his “spit can” I’d relish the taste of Grandma’s fried apples and homemade lard biscuits.

I’d take the two heart attacks a stent, and four bypasses and a year of recovery to see baby Eli and Rue come in the door the first time again.

I’d play countless games of hearts at the student center at West Georgia college to fall in love with my wife. I’d run off the road in a rain storm on our wedding night and double back to Dalton to a tiny little hotel room.

I would load tractor trailer loads of matresses by myself in 100+ degree weather, so I could have Saturday off to go to the baseball card show.

I would do all the stupid things again, just to do a few of the smart things. I’d take the ass chewings, and countless hours of driving out and back to work in Calhoun and Dalton just to have the hugs and the kisses from the ones I have loved, and do still love.

We will never have that chance…perhaps…depending on your philosophy, or depending on how the Universe works. Who knows really how it does work? All I can say is that the joy has vastly outshined the sadness.

Yes, I’d do it again. Unqualified and unquestioned if I could.

To the people who I have loved and who are now gone: I try and remember you as much as possible! I try and think of you each and every day! It’s not maudlin to remember your loved ones and the happy memories you had with them. I think it’s theraputic. It keeps them alive in your memory. They exist there as they once existed physically here on Earth. I try not to think in a mournful way, but in honor.

And, as one song I have heard so succinctly puts it, “Even the bad times are good” We learn from the bad times how better to enjoy the good. We learn from the bad times that we are all human. There are no perfect people. Not now.

As I grow older, I am trying to leave better memories than I did when I was a younger man. I was so self absorbed, and trying always to “get ahead” and “make ends meet” How little I knew about life. How off the mark I was about what constitues happiness. I’m not sure if it’s the dwindling years, or the gathering of more tender memories with those around me. It really doesn’t matter now. What matters is that most days I remember to try and leave a memory with somebody.

I always thought this tiny house in which we live to be a sign of not succeeding.

Now when I think back, I remember the times when everyone was packed in together. We were close. We grew closer. Three kids and their friends. Games played and meals eaten. Shows watched together in silence or in noisy celebration. Report cards reviewed, and papers written and assissted with. Research which benefited me as much as it did the primary party. Situations discussed and problems resolved…..or not. Life lived!

So, I guess it is not so bad. Not really a “sign of success or failure” My grandchildren run and crawly the halls and draw on the walls now. I don’t care. If you looked around now, you’d see crayon pictures hanging and momentos magnetized to the refrigerator. You’d see kids books partially filling the bookshelfs and plastic crates full to the top with stuffed bears and letter blocks. My wife sits not eight feet away from me. I’m glad she’s that close.

So, in twenty or thirty years, or whenever, I hope I’ll have made enough memories in the heads of some of my favorite people that they might even think back and remember when I wrote a little page about it.

A false prophet can be recognized by the fact that he or she yields bad fruit — distrust, discord, confusion, wrangling, gossip, useless disputes, and divisions within the church, Jesus was very concerned about false prophets:

Mt 7:15 Jesus said to his disciples: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing,but underneath are ravenous wolves.

Matthew 24: 4 Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. 5 For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Christ, and will deceive many. 10 At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, 11 and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.

How do we tell who is a false prophet? Jesus tells us to look at the fruit:

Matthew 7: 16-20 By their fruits you will know them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. So by their fruits you will know them.”

One of the places which I still like to go and take a walk when it’s rainy and bad outside, is the Mt. Berry Square Mall.  As a matter of fact, my wife and I went there today and walked to get our cardio workout.  Unfortunately, as my Dad once sang about the old gray mare, “she ain’t what she used to be, many long years ago.”

Mt. Berry Square Mall opened back in 1991.  It was brand spanking new back in mine and my wife’s “heydays” of our working careers.  It was beautiful.  Skylights illuminated the food court and it was full of new stores with new smells, and stocked full of stuff we needed in our lives.  Our sons were still living at home with us then.  If I remember correctly, they opened it early in 1991….almost a “late” 1990 opening.  The first Christmas we shopped there would have been in December of 1991.

As with all other years, 1991 had it’s memorable historical moments.  The first Gulf War took place that year. Space shuttles were being launched with regularity.  The shuttle Columbia carried another piece of Spacelab into space that year.  In December of that year, Gorbachev resigned and the Soviet Union collapsed.  Memorable historical events.

Of course there were the everyday events also occurring in our lives.  Paula and I rode got on the same shift at Crown Crafts where we were working that year, and we rode out and back together to work every day for the next eight years or so.  We had a lot of discussions and listened to a lot of music in those years. We went to lunch together practically every day. We were very lucky to have good jobs at a good company.

Then, on a lot of weekends we went to Mt. Berry Square and shopped.  Afterwards, we might go to the movies in Rome.  A couple of years later, can’t exactly recall when, they opened up a movie theater there at the mall.  We made a lot of trips to Rome during the ensuing years. A lot of trips to that mall.  Most of them were great trips.

Paula’s Mom and Dad made one of their last “spring trips” to Georgia the year the mall opened and we took them there.  Cancer took them both in a few years after that.  My dear mother in law died first in 1992.  She really enjoyed her first and only trip roaming around that mall. She would always say “Wow” or “Oh my” if she thought something was special.  She was a wonderful, caring woman who passed too soon

There were the Christmas shopping trips, when we would always buy a Christmas ornament from the little old folks from Loganville, who set up in the middle of the mall.  They always had some interesting and nicely priced things and it was a pleasure to look at them and select “just the right thing”   Evie played with a set of Russian nesting dolls this year that we bought from those good folks way back then.  Good quality to have lasted so long.

We always looked forward to the day that Santa came to the mall, and started letting the kids come sit on his lap and have pictures made.  I think we have photos of almost all of our grandchildren sitting in that mall Santa’s lap.  A couple of them are hanging on our refrigerator now, held up with assorted animal magnets.  I know my children could recall a lot more memories associated with the mall than me.  Ted was learning how to drive during those years, and I am sure that old red EXP of his went out and back to Mt. Berry quite a few times.

The stores were jam packed with great merchandise back in those days.  You could always find what you were looking for to celebrate a birthday, or any other special day.  For years, businesses were on waiting lists to open up a storefront in Mt. Berry Square.  It was bustling and full of people on weekends.  Not anymore.

As we walked around and around today, there were more empty spaces than spaces with stores.  Sears, which had a presence in Rome for over 100 years closed up last year and sits empty.  The mall has up ads begging businesses to come move in.  It’s a little sad.  No, more than that, it’s a lot sad.  It’s amazing how quickly things change in the world of business, as well as in our lives.  Just as Walmart opened up their stores in many small towns across America and closed up most of the “Mom and Pop” shops in those towns, the Amazon’s and other “online” shopping ventures have begun to cause many malls across America to close up.  I suppose that’s progress, but not for a sentimental old guy like me.

I hope that Mt. Berry Square manages to stay open for a while.  I go out of my way to go there sometimes just to walk and to remember.  There are still sights and smells which invoke the nostalgia of days gone by.  Good days, wonderful times, great memories.  There are closer places to where I live in which I could walk in the rain, but none of them have those memories contained in their walls. They don’t contain my memories, which are kindled and which burn warmly inside my chest every time I go around one of those familiar corners

I hear a child’s laughter, and for just an instant I’m back to 1991, walking through there with Matt, looking for the newest and greatest transformer for Christmas.

And so, it’s worth the few extra miles drive. Well worth it.

 

The Music of the If Game

If…the biggest, most awesome word ever invented.

My Dad always told me when I used “if” that “if a bullfrog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his butt when he jumped” I guess he wouldn’t.

“If a picture paints a thousand words, then why can’t I paint you?”

“If I were a carpenter, and you were a lady, would you marry me anyway and would you have my baby?”

“If I listened long enough to you, I find a way to believe that it’s all true, knowing that you lied straight faced while I cried. Still I look to find a reason to believe”

Hundreds of songs, I’m sure….

Hundreds of quotes….. All beginning with “If”

We are all going to have hundreds of “if” moments in our lives. Those moments of choice that make a difference going forward in how we will live our lives. Moments we look back on and say: “if I had only done _____, then ______. When we make those decisions, they are made.

I’m pretty tired of playing the “if “ game in my life. I’ve done what I’ve done…sometimes until I’ve become undone! It’s a game that’s a waste of time to play.

As that intellectual group of the 60’s “The Grass Roots” once said: Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today, and don’t worry ‘bout tomorrow….

It’s a good philosophy.

Common people badly need a place, a niche in today’s America. We little people, which includes not only those who work for hourly wages, but also the retired, the disabled, and the veteran’s who fall in any of the aforementioned categories…we need a spot in America. Unfortunately it’s been being taken away for the last thirty years or so, and I see little movement on the part of our constipated government to ressurect it.

I’m not sure the “powers that be” realize that you cannot have a “body” without a middle. They may want to have an America with just a head and an ass, but without the guts and especially the heart, you have a country which will soon be DOA in a world full of sharks which have been circling us since World War II. They smell our blood in the water and they want a piece.

We haven’t had leadership in this country since the fifties or very early sixties who have had the welfare of our middle class, and so by default the welfare of our actual country at heart. They all have either been under the control of the billionaires, or trying to become billionaires themselves. I’m tired of hearing all the patriotic hogwash about some of them, and about the fake progressiveness of others. You know what I’m talking about. They all have sucked when it has come down to the brass tacks of making America work for Americans.

There are SO many balls in play in the court of mistakes made, or purposeful acts committed in order to hurt common Americans, that the Williams sisters couldn’t keep them in play. It’s time we realize, we little people, that they.. the rich and super rich, and the Wall street minions intend to enslave us. If you think I’m wrong or I’m kidding, just sit quietly somewhere for a while if you are over fifty, and think where you are now as opposed to where you used to be. Then think about how the media feeds you milktoast in the form of the Kardashians, Deflategate, the Oscars, House of Cards, HDTV, the Cooking channel, the Today show, Fox news, the Weather channel, ESPN, etc, etc, ad infinitum. Think of how they seek to divide you by keeping issues such as gay marriage, guns, religion, abortion, and wars always in the forefront while never mentioning how 1% of the population owns 99% of the wealth. As long as they have that power they don’t give a crap about anything else…period. Listen to Robert Reich, that inequality gap really is the issue.

I for one hate being manipulated and even sometimes falling for the manipulation.

America is lagging behind the rest of the world in so many important areas that it is shameful. Other countries take care and revere their elderly. We put them away, and allow the system to bleed them dry to the point of poverty before they die. We produce High School and College graduates who have NO practical knowledge about what it takes to really function.

So, I guess I’m just fed up with being fed up tonight. I’m touching on unpopular areas which people would rather not think about. Unfriend me if you can’t stand to hear it because I’m probably just getting started. Somebody, somewhere has to piss people off in order to get them to pay attention and perhaps…just maybe begin to participate in taking our country, the little people’s country, the hourly worker’s country, the disenfranchised veteran’s country, the honest teacher’s country, the former manufacturing worker’s country, the small three bedroom house owner’s country, the hunter and fisherman’s country, the small farmer’s country. Maybe if we work together and forget about some of this manure they are trying to use to divide us…maybe we middle class Americans can make a come back.

I swear I hope so…and my apologies in advance for rambling, preaching and blowing off steam.